Top Gear Takes Off

Monday, 28 September 2009 00:00

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May officially launched this year’s
Top Gear Live World Tour today, September 25th 2009, from London’s Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in true Phileas Fogg-style; suspended below a hot air balloon.Famed for their legendary globe-trotting antics, the three presenters took inspiration from some of the world’s most famous explorers including Dr David Livingstone, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) and Sir Edmund Hillary.

In preparation for this year’s tour, which will play to over  340,000 Top Gear fans, the Top Gear Live crew have been hard at it knocking about new ideas, welding things together they don’t understand and nodding  to each other a lot. The result? A completely new show featuring the world’s fastest cars pushed to their mechanical limits, acrobats laying their lives on the line and some middle aged men falling over…. and catching fire a bit.

Fans on four continents can expect an edge- of –their- seats experience with flaming rally cars, extreme underground street racers and cars which change colour in the blink of an eye.  Other sequences will feature the infamous Stig who will be leading our troop of international stunt drivers via a mix of hand gestures, sonic pulses and Morse code, showing audiences the ultimate in precision driving.

“I for one am hugely excited about this coming Top Gear Live tour. We had a fantastic response last year, but to ensure we keep the audience on the edge of their seats once again, I’ve developed some truly groundbreaking machinery for the 09/10 tour. Our team of world class engineers and some of the UK’s foremost special effects designers have combined to create incredible cars that are about as far from road legal as you could possibly imagine!”

Rowland French, Executive Producer, Top Gear Live
The live nature of the shows will give fans the unique opportunity to interact with some Top Gear favourites.  The Cool Wall will feature so that fans can have their voices heard (and then possibly ignored) and audiences will be pitted head to head for the Top Gear lap.   The presenters will receive a number of challenges during the show and this tour’s burning question is “can our intrepid presenters really solve the serious issue of traffic cone deployment?”

The size of the tour makes for some interesting statistics.  This year, it will play to over 340,000 fans on four continents; and 135 trucks, 3 ships, 1 freight plane and 94 cars, and 150 sets of tyres will be required to keep this high-octane show on the road.  The audience will witness an eye-popping 92,160 sq feet of fireballs and have their senses assaulted by decibel levels that reach 104d.

The Top Gear Live 2009/10 World Tour premieres in the UK where it will be part of the MPH Prestige & Performance Show in London and Birmingham after which the tour rolls out to the rest of the World.

Planned destinations include*;

    * London, Earls Court 5-8 Nov 2009
    * Birmingham, NEC 12-15 Nov 2009
    * Dublin, RDS Simmonscourt 3-6 Dec 2009
    * Amsterdam, 21-24 Jan 2010
    * Cape Town, Grand Arena at Grand West 28 – 31 Jan 2010
    * Jo’burg, Coca Cola Dome 4-7 Feb 2010
    * Sydney, Acer Arena 11-14 Feb 2010
    * Auckland, ASB Showgrounds 18-21 2010
    * Hong Kong, tbc

Shell V-Power is once again global sponsor of the World Tour.  Their sponsorship excludes certain markets including Johannesburg & the UK, where they are the headline sponsor of MPH; the prestige & performance motor show, which features the Top Gear Live show. The partnership continues to be a great fit given the stature of the brands within the motoring world. 

The all new spectacular show will play to arena venues in each host city.  Each leg will consist of 10 shows presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May or, outside Britain, a combination of Jeremy and Richard or Jeremy and James, who will team up with a local presenter.

Tickets on sale from 25th September.  For more ticket information visit www.topgear.com/live

-ends-

* All tour dates are correct at time of print.

For further information please contact:

For more information visit www.topgear.com/live or contact Luke Windsor/Ciara Parkes at Public Eye on +44 20 7351 1555.

About Top Gear Live

Top Gear Live is a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Brand Events UK.

The live motoring performance incorporates the drama of film and theatre with the thrills and spills of stunts and special effects. A combination of Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond or James May team up with a local presenter in each tour destination.  The 2008/09 World tour played to sell out audiences entertaining over 312,000 visitors.  This year the tour adds Amsterdam and Cape Town to its list of destinations and further destinations are planned for 2011.

About BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the main commercial arm and a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The company exists to maximise the value of the BBC’s assets for the benefit of the licence fee payer and invest in public service programming in return for rights. The company has seven core businesses: Channels, Content & Production, Digital Media, Sales & Distribution, Magazines, Home Entertainment and Global Brands. In 2008/09, BBC Worldwide generated profits of £102.6 million (before exceptionals) on sales of over £1 billion.

BBC Worldwide was awarded with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in April 2009. This prestigious award for International Trade recognised the company’s substantial growth in overseas earnings and commercial success at outstanding levels, based on 3 years’ trading results, which benefit the UK creative industries and ultimately the licence fee payer.

Brand Events UK
Brand Events was formed in 1999 and is the UK’s most successful innovator in events and exhibitions.  Brand Events has launched some of the UK’s most popular shows including MPH - featuring Jeremy Clarkson - The Outdoors and Vitality shows and more recently the Taste Festivals series of events. The 'Taste' format runs in four cities throughout the UK and Ireland and a number of locations around the world including Johannesburg, Dubai and Sydney. In 2010 Taste will run in 19 different cities around the world.